OFF: Slow News Night? Just Make Something Up.

June 8, 2008 in Reading Response
Tags: bailey, bump, cable, celebratory, cnn, dumb, feinstein, fist, horrible, hutchison, make, network, news, night, obama, off-, off-topic, pointless, senator, something, stupid, topic, tuesday, up

While I understand that CNN must be hurting to fill that news hole following the close of the primaries, and while I understand news isn’t always poignant, worthwhile or even interesting, my mind was still blown when I saw this story:

Obama ‘fist bump’ catching on

(CNN) — In a reference to Barack and Michelle Obama’s celebratory fist bump on Tuesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, ended their conversation on CNN’s Late Edition with their own version of the “hand shake.”

How is this newsworthy, again?

If you’re thinking it, write it in the comments, instead.

Edit: For fans of the fist bump, the fist pound, the dap or the knuckle bump, CNN has the story. They would.

Is All This Trouble Really Worth It?

May 28, 2008 in Personal Reflection
Tags: 15, bare, bones, center, committee, do, edublogosphere, education, flair, hate, horrible, i, i hate, imposed, keyboard, legal, maggot, master, mind, minimum, misery, numbing, of, painful, pieces, redo, rot, russian, sadism, self, student, taskstream, tasktream, teacher, teaching, the, tort, ultimatum

I’d fill you in on the details of the meeting that decided I was to redo — depending on how you view it, do in the first place — the TaskStream busywork, except a certain unnamed source specifically requested that I not quote him.

Not that I’m bound by his ultimatum, legally speaking. Any first-year law student could tell you that truth is an absolute defense against libel, the tort most commonly used in cases involving the written media. However, I’ll honor his request.

After explaining to the makeshift committee about my conviction that, for some reason, everyone involved with student teachers I’ve ever met excepting one has decried the “uselessness” — their word and mine — of credential programs, the committee was unconvinced.

I hadn’t taken that TaskStream stuff seriously. After all, all these credential programs lack merit, I quoted. Paraphrased, their response:

Not this one.

There was, admittedly, one quite convincing personal protest by he-who-shall-not-be-named-or-quoted, but I won’t name or quote him, even though it does him an unfair disservice. I’d much rather quote him, to be honest, and if he revokes this stipulation I shall do so willingly and without hesitation.

Suffice it to say that the committee wasn’t amused by my complete lack of regard for the documentation component of my student teaching semester. Expletives had been involved, and I hadn’t bothered to do more than what I thought was the absolute, bare-bones minimum. In effect, one observed:

What kind of teacher only shoots for a two out of four, for barely passing?

My mind flashed back to 15 pieces of flair, and the rot at the center of the maggot.

This meeting was last week.

As of 13 hours, 52 minutes ago, the first half of my student teaching project was officially redone. Mind-gaggingly painful, headache-inducing sadism. Only Russian has strong enough words to describe the pain of my self-imposed misery.

Screw this, he wrote in a moment of undirected anger and frustration. What’s the big deal with teaching, anyway? Why can’t I be a pilot, instead?

Yet I know I’m going to actually do the assignment this time, and do my God’s-honest best. Hell’s bells.

Half-of-Class from Half-of-Hell, Second Half

April 6, 2008 in Personal Reflection
Tags: attention, bad, benchmark, charismatic, class, classroom, crowded, desk, desks, education, five, half, horrible, master, master teacher, more, not, obnoxious, packed, part 2, parts, period, real, rsp, sophomores, standardized tests, student, student teacher, teacher, test, testing, than, the test, worse, you're

It’s my water bottle. Quiet.

No it isn’t.

Be quiet and do your test or leave.

Okay.

He left, very noisily bouncing his basketball on his way out. The RSP coach left her assigned student, writing Mr. Balla up for referral to a vice principal.

Because he never shows up, I didn’t even know what name to tell her to put on the referral. Naturally.

This class is usually trouble, as the RSP coach is well aware. She’s been here before. Patronizingly, she leans and whispers hoarsely into my ear.

I know they’re bad and how you’re just a student teacher, so maybe I might have an idea that will help you. All the ringleaders are next to the window, so maybe a seating chart? I don’t know if you’ve thought of it.

Yes, I have. Given a warning, they behave themselves just enough so I don’t have pretext to mess with the seating chart. I would have told her that, but she went on to repeat herself for a good minute or two, in the same patronizing whisper. She tells me nothing I don’t already know, nothing I haven’t already thought of.

I’ve already asked myself: Is there something I’m doing wrong, something so seemingly small or insignificant that I don’t even remember it, or to mention it here in the blog? I don’t suppose the reader would know the answer to that question.

This is the same class where even one would-be gangster who shows up regularly will very casually bump into me while walking by, where two girls who love talking back will waddle in five minutes past the lunch bell, noisily slurping their Icee.

I can’t very well lay down the law — my master teacher never minded these habits at all, and the students know he’s really the teacher of record. I’ll be the mean teacher and lose the efficacy I already have.

They can sense that he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. Every week, someone in fifth period tells me:

You’re not a real teacher.

With less than a month of instruction left, it’s too late to fix this class. I just can’t shake the feeling that it would have been so much easier if I had started off the year with them, rather than coming in halfway.